Yet, as I send your child forward to 4th grade, I feel such a sense of pride in knowing they are ready to move on! We have worked as a classroom family and learned so much this year!
I wish you and your child a wonderful and well-deserved summer break that will refuel and refresh him/her for the coming school year. It is great to relax and unwind during that time.
However, it is common for students to backslide somewhat during this time on the learning that took place during the school year. For that reason, I give you some simple tips to help prevent such a backslide.
Try to maintain the learning without making it seem like school work. Keep it simple and fun. Here are some examples:
- Read with your children every day or as often as possible for just a brief amount of time. You might take trips to the library and let them find new books that interest them. Let them read for a while, then you read for a while. Kids really do like it when you give them that special time. -This time can be used for the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge (if you need your child's log in information let me know I can send it to you).
- Surprise them with a special notebook. Suggest to them how much fun it might be if they keep a “diary” of their summer days.Set aside a special time each day for them to write and share with you their thoughts of the day. Then, without sounding teachery, ask them if they can find anything in their sentence(s) that might need fixing (capitals, periods, spelling, etc.) Guide them to find revisions. Make it fun, no pressure! Praise for the thoughts and writing skills.
- To keep up the math skills, play a variety of math games; you can find many at teacherspayteachers.com. Or, for those who enjoy coloring or if you don’t have as much time, encourage them to do one of the many color-by-number math sheets.
- Use all the digital resources we have provided this school year such as Freckle, XtraMath, Prodigy, Zearn, Dreamcape,and Epic!.
I hope these tips are beneficial to you and your child. Have a great summer!
Best wishes,
Mrs. Grijalva